Leave Without Pay for H-1B / Status

I wanted to know if an H-1B employee can go on Leave Without Pay (LWOP) for lets two months and still maintain a valid status? Further to the question, under what circumstances/situations can a employee working on H-1B visa take Leave of Absence for couple of months, stay in United States and not have his immigration status affected?

If you look at the Department of Labor regulations they allow employees for their convenience to take leave for things like tourism. So if you say you want to take 20 days off you could do that without losing your status, but if it is being used by the employer to bench you and them then you can be in trouble. If it is a medical leave of absence, then as long as you have a medical certificate and necessity and your leave is coextensive with the existence of that necessity I think that's ok as well. Hence couple of months are acceptable if the reasons are honest and not a pretext or an excuse to be off a project and be benched. More...[2]

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